


The Beloved Artist, A Close Reading of the Clos Luce Collection

by Star_flaming



Category: Da Vinci's Demons
Genre: 500 years later, Alternate Universe, Faux Academia, MLA format, Other, bet you didn't expect to see THAT tagged, really putting that art history degree to work
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-14
Updated: 2017-03-14
Packaged: 2018-10-05 07:28:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,985
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10301054
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Star_flaming/pseuds/Star_flaming
Summary: Abstract: The Clos Luce Collection, a groundbreaking find in the scholarship of Leonardo da Vinci, has been studied for it's explicit revelations of the relationship between Leonardo and Count Girolamo Riario. Close reading of marginalia, however, opens this collection to be read in a controversial new light, perhaps revealing one of the earliest polyamorous relationships.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [IdrisEleven](https://archiveofourown.org/users/IdrisEleven/gifts).



> This is a belated birthday gift for the wonderful Idriseleven who I love very very much and who makes me smile every day.
> 
> Also, everything in this fic is made up. If there are any scholars who share any names with those in this fic, that is entirely by chance.

Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) was widely believed to have largely abstained from the tradition of presentation drawings, the practice of drawings done to be gifted to fellow intellectuals, due to the fact that none were ever published like Michelangelo’s avid correspondence with both Tomasso de’ Cavalieri and Vittoria Colonna. Most accounts made it clear he did most of his connections with patrons in person, and though a few presentation drawings were known at the time and copied by those in the circles of those presented with the maestro’s work, not too many. However, the scholarship of Leonardo as an abstinent of this public/private tradition has been dealt a blow, with the discovery in the Chateau du Clos Lucé in Amboise of a rather vigorous correspondence to rival the Cavalieri and Colonna letters. This collection, called the Clos Lucé Collection, is a posthumous collection of letters and presentation drawings all in connection with Count Girolamo Riario of Forlì (1443-1505), and their contents slide between Christian and Pagan, sacred and profane, and illuminate the deeply private life of the Count as well as fills in the cracks of Leonardo’s own life.

Count Girolamo Riario is a rather obscure figure in history, not for lack of prominence but for his intense privacy, something rather uncommon among Papal Nephews. Vasari himself only mentions him in passing in his _Life of Leonardo,_ in two sentences no less. But in those two sentences, a figure was cemented in the studies of Leonardo’s life. Vasari says, “it was in 1477 that Leonardo met the Count of Forlì, who recognized his genius due to a like mind, and asked if he would come into Rome’s service. Leonardo declined, but until the Count’s death they remained very close friends, sharing the same mind and appreciation for the same things” (Vasari 305). Vasari insists in those two sentences that Leonardo and Riario have a similar way of looking at the world, and that because of it Riario could recognize Leonardo’s genius at a point in his life when otherwise Leonardo was being denied commissions and only just beginning his relationship to the de’ Medici family. Since then, scholars have been attempting to pull apart what Vasari characterizes by that like-mindedness, looking into separate accounts of Riario’s life. Ronald Whitacre notably wrote that Riario “kept distance from even his own family, but was widely known to be friends with Leonardo. He never published or shared correspondence the way his contemporaries did, but everyone agreed he was a great mind” (Whitacre 23).

Riario is perhaps best known and remembered for his rather scandalous marriage to an African woman of no particular standing. His wife, Countess Zita Hail Mary Riario (d. 1510), was Ethiopian in origin, and very little is known of how they came to meet or even her life before their marriage. Still, they are the one of the rare love matches among the nobility in this time, refusing to annul the marriage even when Riario’s uncle, Pope Sixtus IV “grew so furious at his nephew that he banished his own Captain General from Rome, and threatened to take his title as well” (Whitacre 5). Within two years, they were allowed back into Rome due to threats to the Papal States and a general consolidation of the della Rovere family. Once reinstated to his original role as Captain General, Riario and his wife held what Theriault describes as “soft dinners”, an intimate gathering of those both in and out of their immediate circles where

“all topics were sermonized, that is, a topic was chosen and whoever knew the most about it explained it to those who did not, in contrast to debates otherwise common, such as those seen in _The Book of the Courtier_. To a large extent, the topics were questions of Ethiopian Christianity, for the Countess’ faith was still largely private and unknown. According to all contemporary letters from those who had attended one of these dinners, Countess Riario was agreed (with the usual tinges of racism) to be a brilliant orator; Princess Giovanna, the wife of Count Riario’s cousin Prince Leonardo della Rovere, wrote especially that ‘to hear her speak is to hear something you have never heard before and by the time she has finished to ever wonder why you thought it strange.’” (Theriault 18)

Countess Riario appears often in the letters between Leonardo and Count Riario, and it seems she was an active yet separate participant in these exchanges, not writing her own letters but both men commenting on what she thought. For a woman who never learned to write Italian, it is not surprising that her husband wrote down for her what she wished, her own voice only appearing in small comments of Amharic written into the margins, her citations to Scripture in Ge’ez. Whether or not Leonardo could read Amharic is not the question, but they are soft sarcastic jabs at her husband and at Leonardo himself, and they deserve their place in the scholarship surrounding the Clos Lucé Collection.

The earliest letter was sent by Leonardo, who in his usual brazen manner, does not beg forgiveness for stepping from the bounds of the artist to contact a nobleman first, as Michelangelo did in his earliest letters to Cavalieri. Indeed, he instead begins almost as if continuing a previous conversation, saying “If his Grace recalls, it is not grace but perception that recognizes one for one’s kind, no divine influence but a life of experience alone before one’s match appears” (Clos Lucé 1). This sentence alone, a reference to reference, is baffling and endearing all at once, illuminating Leonardo’s character and setting the tone for the entirety of their correspondence. He seems to be making reference to what Vasari said, the likeminded quality that drew them together. It is the idea that Riario and Leonardo are their own kind, separate from their fellow man, that intrigues the most. Leonardo bemoans in these letters that “so often [his] mind decides to swirl inwards, a whirlpool of perception where sight is suppressed below touch and hearing elevates to make the head ring like a struck bell” and that at “times like these [he misses] the dark room [Riario] and [his] sweet wife once afforded [him] to rest in, away from noise and fuss and nothing like [his] workshop, always echoing with arguing apprentices” (Clos Lucé 18) while Riario writes “it is [Leonardo’s] quicksilver knowledge that is lacking in Rome. The Eternal City misses the value of a man who can see all things and their births as [Leonardo] can, the stance of a man to read back to childhood, a woman’s gaze to tell her life story” (Clos Lucé 14).

It is tempting to believe contemporary rumors of Count Riario’s parentage, to claim and understand this connection that these two men had was born of both being bastard sons, either of a minor Florentine noble or of a pre-elected Pope in his earlier years in the cloth. However, the lack of prominence of the della Rovere family before Sixtus’ assumption of the Papal Throne makes it difficult to ascertain exactly what if any proof those rumors have, and one should not take rumor, even contemporary rumor, as truth. Yet this collection of letters does perhaps illuminate more private matters than any previous record had towards Riario’s character.

The noted gender studies Professor Rachel Guarez of Hildebrants College once wrote that “though modern understandings of sexuality and gender are hard to shake due to our being contemporaries to it, it is nevertheless dangerous to ascribe any modern concept to any historical personage, as the concepts were not familiar to them and thus there is no way to be certain they would agree with such an identity” and this holds true even thirteen years after the article was published (Guarez 62). Many scholars have tried again and again to tease out, as if there was a single answer, the sexualities of many ambiguous historical personages; from Hadrian to Michelangelo to Shakespeare to Leonardo. Granted, the court record of the case brought against Leonardo in the charge of sodomy by the probable-prostitute sometimes-model Jacopo Saltarelli has opened the doors for many to describe Leonardo as homosexual, though Guarez herself jokingly stated “the best definition to place onto a deceased figure would likely be ‘Not Straight’” due to her hesitancy to use even the identity of heterosexuality due to its anachronistic origins (Guarez 62).

If we accept that Leonardo was, in Guarez’s terms, “Not Straight” then the immediate leap is to say that Count Riario and Leonardo’s famous likeminded nature was exactly that, of a man interested in other men. But it is not so clear cut, for even in his letters to Leonardo, Count Riario would write

“[his] own beloved Zita sits nearby, sewing her own gowns for the baby when it should be born, and [he] struggles to keep pen to paper, so [Leonardo] must excuse spotty writing, for who could ever look on one’s wife of the heart and not wish to set down all other business in favor of granting her all the love she could wish? She is [his] Venus, [he] cannot hear her step in the other room without becoming breathless knowing that somehow a beauty placed upon this earth by God has chosen this dwelling as her own, and that this pious, perfect soul crafted by God found its match with [his soul]. [He loves] her well and often and Jupiter himself would faint and come to her in a ray of light to love her, as she would renounce all the but the purest seduction, for she is pure sweet water and even the pagan gods would hesitate to disturb her”

and the asides in private letters meant to never be published or read by another of how much he adored his wife do not lend themselves to a man who desires another and marries to hide himself from the sodomy laws that caught up Leonardo (Clos Lucé 47).

Nevertheless, the modern scholar in gender and sexuality studies, Daniel Peer, wrote in his book _The False Duality,_ “The modern mind in the Western World (here defined as Western Europe, Canada, and the United States) has come of age in an understanding that for everything there is an opposite; the sun is the opposite of the moon, water is the opposite of fire, dogs are the opposite of cats, male is the opposite of female” (Peer 1). This understanding of opposites color our perceptions even as we grow older and realize dogs and cats are separate species entirely, Peer says, to the point where “even when the acronym ‘LGBT’ is understood to mean ‘Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender’ many people refuse to believe that the third identity even exists” (Peer 22).

Between Guarez’s warning not to classify any historical figure even with the firmest of evidence as anything but “Not Straight” and Peer’s warnings not to immediately fall prey to the raised understanding of opposites and require that a figure be hetero- or homosexual, there could be an argument raised for an understanding towards the idea of a bisexual orientation for both men. Riario writes such loving asides towards his wife, and the scholar Demelew Addisu has translated many of Countess Riario’s margin notes, almost all of them with equal fondness towards her husband and to Leonardo himself. “Zita writes gentle asides in the margins, what is written in her hand is reliably such fond notes as ‘No need for such poetry, love, I love you in the plainest way’ and ‘Remember, Leonardo, though we hold your drawings to a glass, we cannot abide a whole letter’” (Demelew 12). The Count and Countess both love each other dearly, and writing in a language few if any Italians could read, we must take Zita’s love notes as to be true, for they couldn’t have been read by anyone should they have been published.

And yet, despite the love the Count and Countess hold for each other, there is certainly more than enough evidence to define Riario and Leonardo’s relationship having a more physical element, whether or not Guarez would agree to categorize them as bisexual. None of these letters were ever published, but a few began with very specific entreaties not to let any other person in their circles read it. Within the Clos Lucé collection, those entreaties are indicators that the letter is more akin to a billet doux than an intellectual correspondence. In Letter 22, written by Leonardo, he begins the letter by saying “this letter I write with half an eye over my shoulder so that its words may be only for you, read it with the same caution” and once the entreaty is finished, he immediately leaps to say “my eyes hunger to see you, my body is weak for your loss. Come to me again, let me hold you in my arms, for they feel empty these days. Should you come see me, I would greet you with countless kisses, your absence feels as physical as your presence” (Clos Lucé 22). Letter 6, written by Riario, is no less explicit about his desires, though it is couched in less direct language as he writes “As a child, I feared that those who did not know Scripture could not know their own souls, but perhaps those old fears kept me from knowing my earthly form, this passing body of mine. It was a vessel for the soul, I thought, no more than that, but as my bride has taught me the body is how we enjoy the Creation, so too have you taught me the body has far more purposes than simply a jar for a soul. My artist, you are prone to the worship of human forms as all artists are, and how much I have learned of them under your tutelage!” (Clos Lucé 6).

Those who have described Leonardo as only having “homosexual actions” have been notoriously silent in regards to these declarations of love and passion between the two, tucked between philosophy and politics. However others, such as Jonathan Adams said at the symposium where this collection was first made public, are “consistently overjoyed to find new and revealing aspects of a historical figure, even if it does make previous assumptions moot” (Svatkova).

Most interestingly is how Countess Riario makes Amharic notes in the margins and at the bottom of letters, even in the passionate letters her husband wrote another man. If the relationship between Riario and Leonardo was not only intellectual but to some extent physical, then one must ask where the Countess’ role in all this was. Demelew Addisu is credited for nearly all the translations of these remarks, as most scholars of Leonardo do not make a point to learn Amharic, and it is his translation that lets us know that where Riario wrote “to know the feel of your skin beneath my hand once more would be the highest of pleasures, to know your hand on mine even higher” his wife wrote beside it “Your case is not so dire, my love, he’ll come running if you make things sound so void of pleasure” (Demelew 19).

As previously said, she is still present in the letters proper, Riario writing for her multiple times, adding her thoughts into their discussion of divine grace and what place gifts play, an earlier echo of Michelangelo’s own discussions with Colonna in the next century. The three of them hold that conversation in equal parts in letters 16-21, and it is here that the Amharic margin notes are missing. Perhaps because the topic was so consuming to them that there was no time for any letters of passion and how they miss the other’s presence.

It seems, at first glance, that the Countess was content to share her husband, as if she understood (and she would have to, considering how the men wrote to each other and the proof that she read at least her husband’s letters) the depth of the connection between the two and so long as she knew her husband loved her as well would not interfere. But there are a few rather confusing notations she made into the letters without the language of passion that seem to evoke a different relationship between the three upon closer inspection. At the bottom of Letter 15, there is a not insubstantial note written in her hand, in which she says “forget not, Leonardo, the oath you once made, for I think of it often and when next you grace our home I will hold you to it. I miss you, our beloved artist, I think often of when you will return to us. I think often of your sweet face, so dear to us, I think often of that smile you smile when you realize you’ve forgotten what we were speaking of, so caught up were you in your ever dancing thoughts. And when next you come, my husband will have to surrender you at least once so that I may partake of that which is better than wine with you” (Demelew 14). Demelew Addisu makes it very clear that though perhaps it is not obvious to an Italian eye, the Countess does in fact slip into Ge’ez, the language the Tewahedo Church uses for Scripture. As a result, it is made very clear that when she references “that which is better than wine” it is the Song of Solomon she is quoting, particularly the second line, which makes this note all the more remarkable; “Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth; for thy love is better than wine” (Song of Songs 1:2).

The Riario couple use the Song often to one another, Riario writing in rapturous tones that his wife is like the Bride of the Song, that she is “black but comely as the curtains of Solomon” and makes reference to the Ethiopian tale of the meeting of Solomon and the Queen of Sheba, writing “she is my water in the desert, the most precious thing in all the world” (Clos Lucé 3). His wife in turn often writes of him as the Groom, and refers to him in her notes and in what she has him write for her as her Solomon. It’s that reference to each other that makes her use of it to Leonardo all the more surprising, as for all his declarations, Riairio does not use it to refer to Leonardo. Dr. Thibault de Gas theorizes that this is “knowingly futile affection”, saying that “Countess Riario wrote her love for Leonardo in a note written in Amharic and Ge’ez, which no Florentine artist could read. Thus, her desire to be kissed ‘with the kisses of his mouth’ as the Song says, is futile and she is perfectly aware of it. Leonardo is her husband’s, and if she loves him it is written in a language where her unfaithful love might go undiscovered”, but this does not seem in custom to the Countess’ character (de Gas 58).

Countess Zita was, as we can tell in these letters, the instigator in the couple. She has her husband write more than once in a way that suggests it; “Zita would have me tell you, my artist, that I have been remiss in my obligations and that she has taken on my duties. She wishes that you shame me for not giving her all that our marriage implies” (Clos Lucé 19). Given the medieval euphemism of “giving the excess” it is easy to read that the Countess was telling Leonardo through her husband that she was the one taking the Count to bed. As to why she would wish Leonardo to know this, it is less clear. She does this a few times, notably in letter 31, just before the conception of their eldest daughter. In that letter, which is marked as the more declarative letters of their passions, she has her husband write “I have, according to my beloved bride, been rather obtuse lately. She wishes that you know how often she sighed and shook her head at me until the night I came to bed and found her there as perfect as the Lord made her. If ever you should find me abed with you, she says, it will be by your doing and never my own” (Clos Lucé 31).

There are plenty scholars who have wondered why the Countess would tell a low born artist, even if he was her husband’s paramour, anything about the intimates of her marriage. Why would she tell anyone such things? Some have said that because of her race there were so few who would stand to hear of how a mixed race marriage was filled with adoration and love, especially of one of the few secular nephews of the reigning pope that would have brought an Italian family to greater prominence. Therefore, they say, she would tell anyone who would hear, as Leonardo clearly did from Riario’s pen. Others say that perhaps these are not from her at all, that they are Riario speaking through her voice to give distance; that in the Renaissance a white man could not write such plain sexual things, but through the voice of a black woman he could have freedom to say so.

This second theory does not stand up, however, to the pure adoration he writes of her without her voice, and the first does not stand to Leonardo’s own letters. Leonardo writes to the Countess, relaying messages to her in letters to her husband, and why would he do so if she were only speaking to the only sympathetic ear she had? In letter 30, Leonardo writes “do tell your sweet wife, I think of her often and remember fondly all the time we spent in her gardens, speaking of all that we know. My apprentices have often asked when you and she might return to visit once more, I think they dream that you might commission a new portrait of her, they love her more than they respect either you or me” (Clos Lucé 30). He speaks fondly of her, and indeed, in Letter 46, Leonardo writes “and to the admired Countess Zita, pass to her all the love I owe, which I know will be no sufferance for you”, implying some amount of physical affection between them, undermining the platonic reading of their relationship (Clos Lucé 46).

This sidelined exchange between Leonardo and the Countess makes it difficult to read these letters as between two lovers who shared also intellectual correspondence. Leonardo sent with his letters various drawings, figures both mythological and biblical and in between. He drew “Solomon and Makeda”, a fully realized drawing of the Queen of Sheba pouring a glass of water as King Solomon approaches her, a drawing that could only ever be informed by the Countess herself, for it is an Ethiopian story not found in any part of Renaissance artistic tradition. It is also a very sexually charged drawing, for the placement of the drawing is not as great leaders meeting but of a woman inviting a man into her bed. This story is used by the Riario couple to refer to each other, and it is interesting, for Leonardo would have to be privy to the origins and be fully aware of how the couple he knew used this story.

I theorize, perhaps controversially, that there is enough evidence within these letters and drawings to suppose that the Riario couple both loved Leonardo, and perhaps held him as a mutual lover. Leonardo would have had to know the sexual charge of the tale of Solomon and Sheba in the Ethiopian telling, and to draw it so completely for the couple he would have had to know how they ascribed it to their own relationship. He tells Riario to pass to her “all the love” he owes, which brings to mind that same euphemism of “giving the excess.” There are undoubtedly many who would disagree with me, but I would promote a closer reading of these letters in response.

It is Riario and Leonardo who write to each other in private letters great love, Leonardo drew for Riario various small drawings and studies; David playing the harp, Danae drawing back in fear from the golden light of Jupiter, multiples of a contemplative St. Jerome (unsurprising, given Riario’s name), Daphne looking at peace as she turns into a tree among others. These drawings have all been studied under the lens of applying solely to Riario, but I would argue they could be read as for the couple, not just the husband. The David, accompanying letter 11, is written in the letter; “enclosed you will find a drawing of David at the harp,” Leonardo writes, “the great poet king who rose from his place as a lowly shepherd that none would regard” (Clos Lucé 11). Some have read this as an explanation for the Countess, but she was widely known to practice a very foreign strain of Christianity, and surely she could not marry a Papal Nephew and be forgiven by the Pope if she were not Christian as well. Therefore, I would suggest that this line is directed for her, comparing her to the King. She rose from complete obscurity to the title of Countess, we know nothing of how she came to leave Africa and her story matches well with an unknown shepherd boy who rose to be a great king. It is a more flattering comparison than Bathsheba, but the fact that it is the king, not the queen, causes hesitation among many to apply it to the Countess.

Other drawings are unclear or do not seem to apply to the couple at first glance, the Daphne and Danae in particular. They are odd depictions for the times; a Daphne without a pursuing Apollo, Danae afraid rather than regally receiving the conception of Perseus. They are depictions of women refusing to become lovers of gods, and were it not for other mythological drawings, it would seem as if Leonardo was pushing a Christian narrative onto them, that they are women who refuse pagan gods. They are unclear, and are best understood for the fact that they are drawn and sent in the period when the Riario couple had been banished from Rome from the fury of Pope Sixtus IV.

If read with the biographies in mind, they could perhaps be seen as refusal of the Pope, taking place of the Greek gods. Countess Riario was apparently offered money to sever with her husband, and Count Riario offered a greater title than what he had if he annulled the marriage (Whitacre 6). With these, it is easier to read the Danae and Daphne, both sent together. Danae is painted often as collecting gold coins, Bernini’s sculpture of Apollo and Daphne is most often read as a sculpture of lovers. In contrast, Leonardo’s drawings show Danae drawing away from gold, and Daphne at peace as she becomes part of nature. It is easy to map this to the couple when taking their lives into account; refusing the significant bribery from papal coffers, choosing to refuse a title that would make one more prominent in the city and rather retreating to one’s own country.

Leonardo would need to know the couple incredibly well to be able to draw such things, would have to be trusted implicitly to be told of what they were offered to separate from one another. It makes sense that Leonardo would need to be just as intimate with both of them to hear these tales and draw for them mythological offerings of his understanding of their choices. And keeping in mind the sexual charge of “Solomon and Makeda” it implies that the intimate relation Leonardo had with the couple is even more intimate than a first reading implies. Michelangelo drew a beautiful Ganymede for Cavalieri, which makes many read it as implying his own relationship with the supposedly beautiful young man, but to take a similarly sexual drawing and say that it reveals nothing of the artist’s relation with the recipient is foolish.

It is difficult to find direct evidence of Leonardo’s intimate relationship with the countess, so much of it is in the sidelined exchanges through the count and in her margin notes that we cannot assume Leonardo could even read. Would it not make more sense to simply have her husband write it for her? Clearly she could read some amount of Italian, if she was responding with her own written notes. This is why de Gas suggested knowing her affection was futile, but I would venture that it was simply a private note. In my own studies of Italian, though I can read and write I am hesitant to speak it, is it so surprising that a woman who learned Italian late in life might not be completely comfortable with all parts of it? It may be that there is no further meaning in what she had her husband write and what she noted in Amharic beyond that she did not feel completely at ease with written Italian.

And yet through these sidelined conversations, Leonardo’s remembering of time spent with the couple he writes to the count, and the notes, it is not impossible to find enough evidence to support this theory that Leonardo was beloved of both parties of the Riario couple. Even aside from the note where she quotes the Song of Solomon, there are plenty times evidence can be found. In letter 27, Leonardo describes the Countess as “best fit for the beauty of the heavens,” and continues with a request for Riario to “let her know that I see her in the stars ever since we sailed together” which keeps in tone with the way he writes of his love for Riario as well (Clos Lucé 27). Leonardo has a singular way of writing his love, and the fact that he uses the same references to sailing for both of them does nothing but imply he views them in the same way.

To the Count Leonardo writes “as on the ship where the seas whispered her blessing to us, so too does the moon, counting down the days where I might see you again, unveiling her face to bear witness to our reunion once more” but similarly to the Countess he writes “the ship that bore me to you did not tell me that I would meet your fair wife, and to her pass all my joy that ever the river would bring me into her acquaintance for it is worth more than all others” (Clos Lucé 43, 31). He references the seas and rivers, and always ships, which is appropriate for a man who sketched the flow and movement of water almost obsessively throughout his lifetime. He does not use different language when expressing his love to the Count or in what he asks be passed to the Countess, and likewise, she has the same lack of differentiation of language in her notes in reference to her husband and to Leonardo.

Countess Zita’s notes are gentle comments, one can almost imagine they are fond sighs she might say if she heard these letters aloud. Next to one of her husband’s many asides of how he loves her, she writes “my darling, you must not be surprised that I love you. I will love you until you stop being surprised and even beyond then” and at the base of another letter she writes to Leonardo “When next you visit, you must come with me to my garden, I will tell you of the Nile if you will come sit beside me and let yourself be as dear to me as I see fit, not how much you think you are allowed” (Demelew 36). These are both insisting that these two men in her life allow her to choose how much affection to bestow upon them rather than assuming they know how she regards them. They are very similarly written and inflected, promises of what will be and orders of what they must do, either sit beside her or stop being surprised at how she loves them.

There are previously listed examples of how the Count writes his love for his wife and for Leonardo, as well as how both Leonardo and the Count use the euphemism of giving the excess, all of which add up into not insubstantial evidence of the equal regard each member of this trio held each other. I do not go so far as to suggest Leonardo might have been the biological father of any of the three Riario children, but even in their later correspondence Celia Masqual (1480-1551), Solomon Demelew (1482-1552), and Eleni Pellina (1485-1565) all remember and mark Leonardo as an integral part of their lives, and mourn his passing as soon as they hear of it.

Their correspondence, all invaluable musings sent between each other on how to reconcile their mother’s faith with their father’s and on what it meant to be mixed race in the 16th century, is interrupted to speak of Leonardo often, always fondly, and when news of his death came from Clos Lucé, it was Princess Eleni who wrote to her sister, “What a tragic loss! I have not wept so since our mother passed into eternity! I will never sleep so easy again, knowing what was stolen from us without us being able to see him go as we did our parents!” (Cavalli 58). Duchess Celia wrote her grief in return, saying that “from this day on I will not smile as I did before, for Leonardo is no more, and France is the one to steal him” (Cavalli 59). Count Solomon too expressed his grief in his diary, writing “Someday I shall smile again, someday I shall laugh, but now all I may do is weep bitter tears that makes my Amelia fear some ill has befallen my sisters or our family. To lose a man who means so much! The world is lesser for it, my world is darker and smaller now, a dungeon of pure black filled with snakes and snarling beasts, and I have lost my last torch” (Williams 87).

This grief Count Solomon expresses is a direct mirror to how he wrote of his parents’ deaths, describing them as protective torches in a dark world, and to place Leonardo at the same level as his parents is compelling evidence that Leonardo was dearer to more than simply Count Girolamo. Leonardo was firmly part of their lives, and was mourned at the same level as their parents, as if he was a third parent. Many have commented on how close the three were to Florentine political thinker Niccolò Machiavelli, but few have examined these outpourings of grief for Leonardo let alone compared them to the grieving for their parents, but the Clos Lucé Collection has revealed a deeper connection with which to do so.

This Collection has illuminated infinitely the intensely private Count Girolamo Riario, and filled in much of our understanding of Leonardo, but it has also revealed much which went unknown for so long, revealing a completely private and deeply passionate love between not only two men but in perhaps one of the earliest examples of polyamory, a shared and equal love between three people to where the children who grew seeing this love considered all three to be equal parents. It is perhaps controversial, but not impossible, and should not be dismissed on sheer reaction alone, for there is plenty evidence to support this as there is any other reading of this remarkable collection. These figures have been debated endless times over the years, but a new argument deserves its place at the table just as much as the older theories.


End file.
